“Go where he will,” claimed the great American essayist and educator Ralph Waldo Emerson, “the wise man is at home.” One thing we try very hard to do at a residential liberal arts college like the University of Puget Sound is to offer our students the ability to make themselves at home, to find the place where they belong, to enable them to learn how to be free and easy wherever they are, and yet never allow their spirits to rest. In short, our goal is for our students to know how to make themselves at home anywhere in the world. That is what it means to be truly wise.
A good education at the right college will help you discover how to do just this. At the right college, no matter how far away it is from familiar faces and well-known places, you will always be at home. You may be challenged with new things, made uncomfortable by new ideas and people, and confronted with questions you never thought about, but you will learn how to be at home even in these circumstances, and to walk with grace and confidence in those conditions of challenge. That is the quality I see in the students and alumni of Puget Sound that inspires me so much, and it is what we strive to encourage in the unique environment for living and learning we have established.
As you plan for college, many people will ask you what you plan to do with your college education. The fact is that in the rapidly changing global economy in which we find ourselves, most of you will not end up doing what you think you will do when you enter college. You may plan to become a doctor or a lawyer when you apply to college, and once you are in school you may discover talents and ideas and inclinations that lead you to become a filmmaker, or a software engineer, or a financial analyst, or a diplomat, or even all of these in sequence. With the right education—one that prepares you to ask the right questions, assess complex situations, evaluate different options, express yourself clearly, and arrive at reasonable conclusions—you will not only get a good job, you will probably enjoy several different careers over the course of your life. If you know how to adapt successfully to new circumstances—to be at home anywhere—you will not just do something in life; you will do many things.
Rather than wondering, “What will I do with my college education?” the more important question to ask as you consider college is, “Who will I be?” What kind of a person do you want to become? What kind of qualities do you want to nurture? What kind of contribution do you want to make to the world? Who will you be?
“The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience,” John Dewey reminded us, “does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.” At Puget Sound, we believe that the best educational experience does not make you choose between principles and reality, between an idealistic pursuit of truth, on the one hand, and a more realistic training for a career, on the other. We believe that a broad education in the arts and sciences will produce the most effective and capable citizens in society.
“Home,” the poet T. S. Eliot observed, “is where one starts from.” The college you choose is the place you will start from on your road to becoming who you will be. The right college—like a real home—is neither the place you come from nor the one where you end up. It is where you begin to become the most complete and unique person you can be. The best college to attend is the college that will make the best home for you, the place that will challenge you to think in new ways, attempt things you never thought you would try, and begin to discover yourself as a person of original ideas you never dreamed of, talents you never thought you had, opportunities you never thought would be open to you. If you choose your college wisely, you will find the home from which you will start an incredible journey of discovery.
